


Six Endings

by nanda (nandamai)



Category: Mad Max Series (Movies), Mad Max: Fury Road
Genre: Angst, Backstory, Gen, Grief, I Made Myself Cry, Implied Childhood Sexual Abuse, Implied Rape/Non-con, Loss, Women Do Not Have Easy Lives in the Wasteland, mother/daughter relationships
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-03
Updated: 2016-01-03
Packaged: 2018-05-11 13:32:31
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,455
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5628379
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nandamai/pseuds/nanda
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The last time she saw her mother was ...</p>
            </blockquote>





	Six Endings

**Author's Note:**

> This is not the story you expect from me.

The last time Angharad saw her mother was when she was very small. It was her grandmother who raised her, among the Wretched. Grandmother told her that her mother had been ugly, but her father, who disappeared into the wastes when Angharad was 72 days old, had been blond and tanned and beautiful. She often said she hoped Angharad would turn out like her mother, and Angharad didn't understand.

She began to, as she grew older, as older girls, the prettiest girls, were taken up on the lift and never seen again.

Grandmother just said, "The bad man takes them," and she seemed to look at Angharad with sadder eyes every day.

Angharad was just over 3,000 days old when Grandmother traded for the knife, and sharpened it with a stone. 

"I'm sorry, baby," Grandmother said. "This world is not good to beautiful women."

Angharad cried, but held still. She understood. The tears stung the cuts.

The last time she saw her grandmother, the scars on Angharad's face and her arms were still red, and the gatekeepers were pulling her out of Grandmother's arms. Angharad heard her scream all the way to the top of the spire.

***

The last time Capable saw her mother, they were dying of hunger and thirst, all three of them, in the wasteland. Their car had broken down, and Mum had green sores on her leg, and she kept telling Capable to take her brother and the little bit of water they'd saved and continue on foot. 

They had heard of a place where water flowed up from the ground, and had been heading there. 

Capable didn't want to leave. But she was old enough to know that Mum was going to die, and she wanted her baby brother to survive. She wasn't old enough to decide, she yelled at Mum, and Mum cried.

The decision was taken away from her when a truck full of men wearing white paint stopped by the car. 

They had food, the men said, and they came from the place with the water. They'd take Capable, but Mum begged them to take the baby, too. The men gave in with ill grace.

Capable didn't cry, and her brother was too young to understand. She stared out the back of the truck as they drove away, holding him tight to her chest. 

When they reached the Citadel, she looked up and saw more green than she'd ever imagined. They could live here. They could --

But the white-painted men took the baby away as they dragged her onto the lift. She screamed and cried and shouted after him, and she never saw him again.

She still looks, now, every time she sees a war boy who's growing out his hair after the Immortan's death. But none of the hair is red.

***

The last time Dag saw her mother, they were sleeping side by side in a threadbare blanket. Her mother's arm was around Dag, as always, keeping her safe.

Dag woke in the night to a cold she'd never known. "Mummy?" she asked, but there was no answer, and when she tried to move, the arm around her was stiff.

She screamed and screamed until someone freed her -- she heard cracking -- and some women led her away, so she wouldn't see what happened next. 

After that, the only person left was Dag's uncle, whom her mother had always warned her against. Dag ran from him, slipped into other families when they would accept her, and into child-sized cracks in the rock when they wouldn't.

When the gatekeepers took her away, she thought, "Uncle can never catch me again!"

***

The last time Toast saw her mother, her family was driving away, her little sisters waving out the back window.

They'd come to the Citadel for trade, for food and water and enough guzz to reach the sea, and they all knew there was only one way to get it.

"They say he treats his wives well," Toast's father said. Even then she knew it wasn't true. She could see it in her mother's eyes.

She had four younger siblings, soon to be five. She'd learned how to take care of them and herself, been the rock her parents depended on. Her sacrifice would save the rest, and no matter what the man was like, she'd never be hungry now.

"Be strong, my darling," her mother said, carefully not touching.

Toast wanted to say, "I love you," but nobody talked about love in the wasteland.

She squared her shoulders and raised her chin as she watched them go.

***

The last time Cheedo saw her mother, they were both full of joy.

Every day, since before Cheedo could talk, her mother had said Cheedo was beautiful, and that beauty was what would keep her alive. Someday she'd live up high in the spires, with all the food and water and baths she wanted. She'd wear soft clothing and she would love the other wives like sisters.

Mum had lived up there, once, but she'd lost too many babies and been sent down. Cheedo had arrived later, but the Immortan wasn't her father. Thank goodness, Mum said.

She taught Cheedo how to keep the tangles out of her long hair with patient fingers, how to scrub her body with sand to keep it smelling nice. She scared away all the men who stared.

By the time Cheedo was noticed by the gatekeepers, Mum was pregnant again. She looked up, hands on her stomach and eyes bright, as Cheedo was lifted away, and Cheedo had never been so proud. 

When they return from the Fury Road, Cheedo goes Below. She takes Capable, and expects Furiosa to protest, but Furiosa, still recovering and still exhausted, just shrugs. 

As she and Capable walk through the crowds, Cheedo hears her name. Her heart soars to the sky.

"Cheedo! Mistress Cheedo!"

But the voice is wrong. It isn't her mother; it's a woman who hated her mother for the time she'd spent in the vault.

"She died in childbirth," the woman says. "The baby came early." She grabs Cheedo's hand, and Cheedo jerks it away. "Take us up with you!"

Cheedo wants to take them all up, but not today, and not this woman.

Capable puts an arm around her and steers her away, and they return up above with nothing but tears.

***

The last time Furiosa saw her mother, they were both bruised and broken after three days in the back of a truck. Their hands were tied, and their feet, and Furiosa had stayed strong and defiant until her head smashed into the wall on a sharp turn. In later years, she would decide the rough ride was intentional. At the time, she cried.

"Stop it," her mother hissed. "Don't let them see your weakness. You are Vuvalini."

Furiosa saw the terror in Mama's eyes, but gulped the tears down as fast as she could anyway. She couldn't do anything about the snot on her face.

"Where are they taking us?" she asked when could talk.

"I don't know." Furiosa has long since decided that wasn't true. "Just be ready to fight when they untie us."

Furiosa blinked, and nodded.

When they reached the Citadel, she was frightened by the noise and the smell -- so many people, she'd never imagined so many people -- but she didn't let it show. She was an initiate, not a baby, and she would fight as long as she was alive.

She bit the hand that dragged her out of the truck. She kneed two men in the groin. Mama broke a nose with her head and jabbed another man in the windpipe with her elbow.

"More trouble than the little whore's worth," one of the men said. 

The two Vuvalini were outnumbered; eventually, Furiosa's arms were pulled back and up until she felt her shoulders would tear out of their sockets, and she was forced to bend over. She saw a rifle come down hard on Mama's leg and saw bone.

Mama growled. She somehow pulled herself upright, with a broken leg and her hands still tied, and headbutted a man in the stomach. Someone grabbed her hair and yanked it back, bending her neck at a frightening angle.

Furiosa was still trying to kick them. She wished for longer legs. They laughed as they watched her struggle.

"I am Vuvalini!" Furiosa shouted. "I will see victory!"

A deep voice said, "Enough!" and blood spurted out of Mama's neck. 

Furiosa didn't have time to scream before a blow to her temple knocked her out.

She woke with a headache, and a greasy man with metal tools staring between her legs. She kicked him in the head.

**Author's Note:**

> [Here I am at Tumblr and there is lots more Mad Max.](http://nandamai.tumblr.com)


End file.
